Goth hairstyles

Brighton Goths Paula Huntbach and Angela Charles recall the hairstyles that were an essential part of the Goth look.

Paula Huntbach

"The first thing I did was my hair...I had excessively long hair in the mid 80s, down almost to my knees, and it was a kind of reddish colour....it was eye-catching, but I didn't like it, I wanted black spiky hair. So I went to a hairdresser which I'd never been to in my life....and I sat down and said I wanted to have kind of black hair, spikyish, I was trying to explain about wanting to be a Goth without actually voicing it. The very first hairdresser refused to do it....But another girl in the salon came over and she, oh she was wonderful....And she set about dying it black and then she put lots of layers in it and she put lots of mousse and hair gel in it and she spiked it all up and when I looked in the mirror it was a total transformation, I was a Goth. And she showed me how to backcomb it all and I left the salon and walked, I remember walking along Kensington Gardens in Brighton just looking side-long into all the shop windows at myself. I was walking on air. I just felt 10 foot high, it was fabulous and it was a look which I kept for over 10 years."

Oral history interview in Brighton & Hove Museums' Renegade collection (OH000028).

Angela Charles

"I never had black hair. I had bleached white hair... To begin with I had a root perm and had the sides shaved so it was like a mohican. But it was still a bit curly, a bit too curly, so on top of the root perm and having it bleached I sort of would crimp it as well and backcomb it and just keep spraying it and crimping it, so that the crimpers would be clogged up with gunk from like hairspray and hair and hairdye, whatever. My friend Peter who I'd been at school with, he was a classic. He had absolutely massive hair and we'd iron it before we went out. Put loads and loads of hairspray on it and then iron it. It's just amazing he didn't blow up. But we'd just keep ironing it and it would get harder and harder and would stick up and in the taxi he'd have to virtually lie down because he couldn't fit his hair in. But it was brilliant."

Oral history interview in Brighton & Hove Museums' Renegade collection.